Bringing an iPhone to Chengdu

[hahahabote]

Hey all,

I am coming to Chengdu next month to study at Sichuan University, and I have a question about whether or not I can bring my iphone with me.

Here’s my current plan:

1. I am due for an upgrade on my phone, so I plan to upgrade and get the iPhone 5. My whole family is on one contract, so apparently even if we drop my line it won’t be much cheaper a month. So instead of completely dropping my line, I’m going to upgrade and just take out all my minutes and data.

2. Then, I plan to unlock my iphone (apparently it’s cheap to do it on ebay)

3. When I finally get to Chengdu, I’ll buy a sim card there and start using my phone as usual.

Has anyone else done anything like this? I think it’d be cheaper to get the upgraded phone here than to buy an iphone in Chengdu, but tell me if I’m wrong.

Thanks for any and all help!

[Michael M]

I’m not an expert but I think that will work fine. My iPhone is an unlocked one from Hong Kong and it works with no problems.

[Brian]

Try asking your provider to unlock the phone for you, tell them you will be traveling temporarily. AT&T was cool about it for me.

If you are currently using a CDMA iPhone 4 (w/o SIM slot) then you will definitely need to upgrade.

 

[Federico]

https://www.chengduliving.com/forum/search/?bbp_search=iphone

[Charlie]

I agree with Brian, I think the best thing you can do is get the carrier to unlock it for you. A friend of mine did this a few months ago, I think he ended up paying something like $20 to get Sprint to do it for him and it was fast and easy.

[Chris Ziich]

On Verizon, if your account is in good standing they’ll unlock your phone for international use for free.  I’m not sure if that’s the case for other carriers though.  But you can’t use a Verizon iPhone in China anyways.

Also beware of theft. iPhones are targeted heavily here.

[Author]

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